Joy Banner

My Mom and I wanted to add some color to our Christmas decor so we went to the fabric store and came home with these.

We traced and cut out a pennant shape.

Then we made a stencil out of chipboard for the word "Joy". (Cricut Doodletype Font.)

We traced the stencil onto red burlap and cut out each of the letters.

We also cut out squares of regular burlap and sewed the letters on with a zig zag stitch.

We wanted to add a little tree to each side, so we attached that to the burlap too. (We freehanded the tree, didn't use the Cricut on this one.)

Time to lay out the banner and put it together.

We used bias tape to go across the top.

Here she is up on the Thanksgiving mantel. (I haven't decorated for Christmas yet- gasp!)

I'll be linking to these parties this week. Have a great one!

Zig Zag Footstool

I found a super cute footstool at an estate sale. I paid about $5 for it. It was in great shape, but the tapestry fabric was not my thing.

I reupholstered it with some leftover chevron fabric I had and spray painted the base black. After all that hard work, time to put my feet up!

There's even a little storage inside! What should I put in there?

I'll be linking to these parties this week.

Recovering a Lamp Shade

Remember my childhood dresser redo? I mentioned that I've been redecorating our guest room and that is where the dresser is, but I also needed a lamp to provide some mood lighting to my guests. Today I want to share with you this cute lamp that I painted and recovered.

Don't get scared. If *I* can recover a lamp shade, so can you! I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but I love how it turned out. I'm hoping I can shed some light (pun intended) on the subject for you.

This is what the lamp started out looking like.

I taped off the electrical components of the lamp and gave it a nice spray with light yellow paint.

I used the lamp shade to trace and make a pattern. I kind of rolled it as I traced. I didn't have a lot of fabric to work with, I was using a scrap that I found in the remnants bin at the store, that's why I decided to go with the making-the-pattern-approach.

This is what my pattern ended up looking like. Depending on your lamp shade, yours will look different. My pattern is for 2 sides of my lamp, so I knew I would have to cut out 2 pieces of fabric using this pattern.

I cut out my fabric with a little help from Choco. (She has a habit of always making herself comfortable on the exact area of fabric I need to work with. She is too cute to kick off.)

Use some spray adhesive to attach the fabric to the old lamp shade.

Remember how I was working with a small amount of fabric? Because I had 2 pieces of fabric, I had to seam up my edges, but it was easy, I just folded the ends under to finish them off and used the spray adhesive.

The top and bottom are going to have all kinds of crazy fly-away fabric. This is ok. I will show you how to finish it off.

Trim the excess fabric.

Now use bias tape and hot glue it around the edges to finish it off.

Smooth it down and make sure it stays put!

It was really pretty easy!

I have a few more finishing touches to put on the guest room and then I will let you see it! I am also still working on a spray booth tutorial. Good things come to those who wait...

I will link to these parties this week. How fun!

Refinished Footstool

I scored an awesome deal on this old footstool. This is what it started out looking like:

And it even opens- look how cute!

But this top part of it... I don't like it so much.

So I took it all apart.

I sanded, cleaned and painted the bottom of it a light yellow color. I removed the old fabric from the top.

I used the old fabric to measure and cut a new cover.

I then stapled it on with the staple gun.

I put it all back together.

When you're all done, put yer feet up!

Too cute! What treasures can I store inside?

Stay tuned for some other vintage treasures I am refinishing. Until then, I will be linking up to these parties this week.

Coupon Organizer

Are you one of the many people trying to get organized in January?? Here is a helpful idea that works for me - a fabric envelope. I use it in my purse to carry coupons. It is simple, only uses a scrap piece of fabric, and it's reusable! (Yay environment!)

I started with a scrap piece of fabric. I cut 2 strips and just eyeballed it without any measuring. You can make it any size you want it. I folded up what will become the bottom of the envelope, just to see the size.

I wanted my envelope to have a curved flap, so I used a plate to trace the curve. I then cut around the curve with my rotary cutter.

I pinned the two pieces of fabric with the right sides together and sewed all around it, leaving a little opening to turn it right side out.

Here it is right side out, and sew the little opening closed.

Pin the bottom and sew up the sides.

Attach a button and you have a fabric envelope! (I actually cheated- I used a snap to close the envelope and just hot glued my button to the front. Don't judge, I made this when I first started sewing and I hadn't met the button hole function on my sewing machine yet!)

This results in a super cute way to get your purse organized. How cute would it be to make one of these and throw a gift card inside as a little gift for someone? Oh the ideas are endless...

I will link up to these parties this week.

Mini Notebook for your Purse

With Halloween over (Happy Halloween!) I find Christmas is on my mind (nevermind Thanksgiving, I guess). In fact, my husband and I have a plan this year to get all of our Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving. So, I decided I needed to get organized. I found tiny composition notebooks at Target (2 for .99). I wanted something to carry around in my purse to write down gift ideas and gifts bought for everyone on our list.

I followed my tutorial on covering notebooks in fabric. This time though, I found it easier to paint the notebooks white to cover up the black and yellow swirled design.

Trim the fabric. This is a great project to use up those fabric scraps!

Trim the head n bond.

Iron the heat n bond to the fabric.

Peel back and iron on the notebook.

Trim the edges.

Iron over it one more time. Nice and slow on the edges. And there you have it- a mini notebook that will fit right into your purse. You could use it for grocery lists, thoughts, phone numbers, anything!

I will like to these parties this week.